


Sunk

by autumnstwilight (sewohayami)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sewohayami/pseuds/autumnstwilight
Summary: He reunites with Luna after the rite in Altissia. Everything gets worse from there.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13
Collections: FFXV Halloween Week 2020





	Sunk

Noctis finds her, among the wreckage and rubble of Altissia, in the hall of a building appropriated as a field hospital. Weariness weighs heavy on her shoulders, head hung and golden hair so bedraggled he barely recognizes her. Her clothing has been torn from her, and so she clings at the neck to a woven silver shawl, an oversized gentleman’s coat draped over her shoulders. But she is alive.

“Prince Noctis,” she says, when he approaches.

It’s then that Gladio points out, with pride and approval, that Noctis is no longer a _prince,_ and Luna’s face contorts for a moment with an emotion gone too soon to name. Her fingernails dig into his arm. He wants to know what happened to her, how much of it he merely dreamed, how she made it here, but words have never come easily.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and she nods.

“I will survive,” is how she phrases it. Which he supposes is fair enough. No one in Altissia is alright, but Leviathan’s rage has been quelled, and the rebuilding can begin. Another Astral under his belt.

“Forgive me,” she says, after a silence, “It’s been an eventful day.”

He laughs hollowly, “No kidding.”

She smiles as the Altissian guards take her away to her rest.

* * *

She is more distant than he remembers, weighed down perhaps by years of imprisonment— or perhaps the strain of the rites, as Ignis had suggested. It is up to him to bring up the matter of the wedding, and her demeanor is reticent.

“There will be all the time in the world to think about that. Other concerns are more pressing.” 

Her gaze tracks to the wall.

She is less patient about the Ring, discovered among his bedsheets. He has no excuse, really.

But his body seizes when he raises the Ring to his finger, feeling the resistance of a powerful force. His muscles burn and shake. Always, when he reaches the threshold, he turns and retreats.

It’s all wrong. He can’t do this. He can’t replace his father like that. He can’t crown himself a King in exile, put an end to their roadtrip, come home to a reality where his father is dead, Insomnia has fallen and all that lies ahead of them is a war he feels unfit to lead. He can’t move forward. He knows he’s letting everyone down.

And so, as much as Luna seems to be avoiding him, he avoids her, unable to look her in the eyes. Gladio is less amenable to being avoided, dragging Noctis out of his room for increasingly brutal training sessions that Noctis suspects are a way of venting his frustration.

The two finally come to blows on a humid afternoon that raises the stink of mold from their still-damp hotel room. It’s Ignis who calms things down, Ignis with his quick mind and cool logic, but Noctis can’t miss the glint of disappointment hidden behind glasses when Ignis turns back to him. He slinks back to his bedroom, somehow more cowed than if Gladio had decided to beat sense into him.

* * *

“A moment, Noct.”

There’s something subtly different about the way Ignis says his name this time, the way it seems to catch on his teeth. Noctis bristles under the attention, sure nothing good is coming of it.

“Are you hoping that someone else will wear it for you?”

“What?”

Something glints in Ignis’s eyes, and then in his hand as it unfurls, and fury boils up inside Noctis.

“Don’t you touch that! It’s my father— It’s— It’s mine.”

“Were you not told that a King pushes forward always? Your father is no longer with us, and you can no longer rely on him to shield you from—”

“Get. Out.” snaps Noctis, and Ignis throws his hands up, Ring still pinned in the palm of one hand by his thumb, then lowers them to the table. Noctis turns away, listens to the rustle of his clothing and the slam of the door as he leaves. He remains in place, glaring at the wall, feeling the echo of the door when Ignis walked out.

* * *

It’s early evening when Gladio asks him where Ignis is. Noctis explains, briefly, reluctantly, that they fought, and that Ignis had stormed out, but as he speaks it dawns upon him that Ignis would never have left for this long. Not normally. He might owe an apology this time.

They search the obvious places, and after that, they tear apart the city long into the night. It’s Noctis that finds him eventually, the scorched silver glinting in the moonlight as he hangs from a warp-point. It’s with a jarring impact that he lets himself fall onto the cobblestones, and almost fortunate that he is here first, that there is no one around to hear how he screams, to see him fall apart like a child. The others arrive shortly, while the salt tears are still burning on his cheeks, the ash smeared over his hands and face. He never knew the remains of a fire could be so cold. 

* * *

It’s the _why_ that burns, more than anything. That Ignis, beside him since childhood, would do something so impulsive, and self-destructive, and… betray him. He can’t ask, he’ll never be able to ask, and so he can’t forgive. The uncertainty remains, multiplied a thousandfold, but now with a cold core of anger, restrained only by lack of a target. It presses out from within him in every direction at once, and crushes him under its weight.

And yet, it’s hard to disagree with the ongoing assertions, stronger now, that they should move on. The streets of Altissia make him sick. He’s not sorry to leave them behind.

Luna returns the Ring to him. The gesture is a condemnation.

The accusations chorus in his mind with every rattle of the train breathing over the tracks. When it idles, the silence is equally unbearable. Prompto flits out at every chance he gets, ostensibly to take photos, but perhaps to escape the oppressive atmosphere on board. They pull into Cartanica for a scheduled change of drivers.

“Noct. I heard there’s an abandoned mine nearby. I’m going to go and take some photographs.”

“What are you asking my permission for?” Noctis asks, but it must come out more harsh than jokey, because Prompto bristles.

“So-orry. Be back soon, Your Majesty.”

* * *

He isn’t.

Noctis starts awake when the doors begin to close and the train moves.

“We’ve gotta make them stop! Prompto’s not back yet!”

“Are you sure?” asks Luna, and her composure infuriates rather than calms him.

He finds Gladio and confirms that neither of them have seen Prompto. Neither of them can call Prompto. His phone is dead.

“Your friend may well find his way back to us,” Luna soothes. “There will be other trains.”

“We’re going to wait at the next stop, then,” Noctis insists.

There is no next stop. Daemons arrive, as if from nowhere, clinging to the carriages and hissing through the windows. The train speeds on, ferrying its precious civilian cargo. Pain bursts from within Noctis’s skull, and then the Hydrean is there, curling her sinuous body around the entire train and tracks, scouring the daemons with her raging waters. Battered, the train clatters into Tenebrae. The tracks behind are impassable— there will be no catching up and no going back.

He is surprised when Luna is the most anxious to push forward, driven by the dissatisfaction that has possessed her since Altissia. She claims she has no wish to see the rooms that cloistered her for so long, nor the citizens awaiting her return— for they await not her, but the safety that she represents. The duty of a royal is to hasten to bring about that safety. The darkness is closing in.

“The Oracle does not rest until her calling is fulfilled,” she speaks, with a bitter smile.

Gladio listens, poised as though he is watching her, but doesn’t argue. He appears torn, wanting to press on now that the Crystal is almost in their grasp, sure that Prompto should be able to take care of himself, all the more desperate to maintain their mission as it falls apart. And yet.

He takes Noctis aside as they return to the train, says that they need to speak alone. Emphasizing the _alone_ part, with a glance at the Oracle. It’s hard to find privacy on a passenger train, harder still with Luna’s gentle clutch always on his arm, her serene gaze ever upon him, but at night he manages to wake without disturbing her and sneak from his sleeping compartment into the end car.

Gladio is slumped against the cargo, blood like grease and rust in the dusky light. The air reeks of copper and ozone. Noctis falls to his knees, the shudder of the rails working its way up his spine. How could he have let this happen again?

Luna arrives, wandering from her bunk in search of him. He cries into her, trembles. Her jaw sets hard.

“As if you’re being hunted. We must make haste”

He looks at her, terrified and hopeless, and she offers her guidance. Time is of the essence. The train will soon arrive in Gralea. The Crystal will be within its fortress. With the Ring and the Crystal in hand, he will finally be ready to fulfil his destiny as King. What his comrades gave their lives for. He must do it, for there is no one else.

“But Prompto—” he starts, and she shakes her head slowly.

“I fear that he has met the same fate.”

“No!” he insists. She persuades him, slowly, calmly. The power he needs to defend others is within Gralea. Perhaps, if Prompto fell into enemy hands, they would take him there also.

“Your calling awaits,” she instructs him. She holds out the Ring with a dainty grip, slips it over his trembling finger. He cries out, shudders as the magic bursts from within him, and looks up to be greeted by a glint of triumph in her eyes. He takes her hand and follows behind like a child.

* * *

Zegnautus Keep crawls with daemons and MTs gone haywire, yet it is scarcely necessary to fight. All seems to part for the Oracle as she treads through the darkness, her calm inhuman, eerie. Yet she is the sole light, and he dares not stray from her.

In the heights of the keep, the Crystal illuminates its chamber with an otherworldly glow. Light ripples on the walls as though diffracted by water. The echoes too resemble the depths. The air is thin and cold. He feels as though he could drown here.

But at the center is a great weight, one that seems to draw in the world around it, that sinks as it remains still. The catwalk seems to tilt down toward it, the light obscures all else. There is a single path over a yawning abyss.

“Go,” she commands him, and he sucks down his fear with a breath and steps forward. She follows behind with swift strides.

The Crystal jolts him with a static shock when he lays his hand on it. He steels himself, forces out the creaking words.

“I don’t want to lose anyone else. Help me.”

It responds in an instant, devouring his hand with Light, refusing to let go. He pants and struggles as it pulls him deeper, scorching cold on his skin, unyielding as stone. As Luna’s expression when he cries out to her. She watches idly, draws near, lays a hand on his cheek. And changes.

The face before him is long-forgotten, a memory of struggles he thought past. Who would have thought that Ardyn Izunia followed them still? Noctis thrashes in confusion, fighting the Crystal that binds his limbs.

“Luna… Where’s Luna?” he growls, rage trembling like terror.

“Sunk,” comes the reply, “beneath the Hydrean’s fearsome waves. Unmourned and forgotten.”

“No!” The word escapes in a burst of confusion.

“I’m afraid so, Prince Noctis. Or have I earned the right to call you ‘Noct’?”

His enunciation of that word sparks a familiarity Noctis is desperate to forget.

“You— all this time! I’ll kill you!”

“Will you?” Ardyn asks, tapping his fingertip on Noctis’s cheek. “But your destiny awaits. Do dream well. I’ll be waiting.”

When he opens his mouth to reply, crystal floods between his lips. The surface closes above him, and the depths drag him under.

**Author's Note:**

> All directly quoted dialogue in this fic is either Noctis or Ardyn speaking.


End file.
